


Rags and Bones

by thornwhipped



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, amnesiac molly, bad self care, bigotry against sex workers, fantasy universe bigotry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 22:45:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14146233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thornwhipped/pseuds/thornwhipped
Summary: Clutter lines the edges of his consciousness, odds and ends of a previous inhabitant, and it's nothing, most of the time, safe to be ignored.But it's not always his choice which of the secrets to keep.





	Rags and Bones

The language fit easily into his mouth as he learned to speak again at all, but like everything else he possesses, it's gleaned, patched, embroidered. Most others don't hear much in it beyond _threat_ , but Jester, whose own syllables trill in Infernal the same as in Common, tells him he's got an interesting accent. Worldly, roving, she says. He thinks, at home everywhere, anywhere, nowhere.

(Yasha of all people, she with the blood of angels in her, sometimes corrects his pronunciation. He doesn't know just how she's come to speak it so passably, but the story he suspects makes him want to bottle whatever emptied out his own head and gift it to her.)  
  
The only thing Mollymauk really owns, that can't be taken away from him except in the most final way - at which point it won't be his problem anymore - is his body. And even that only his through right of theft. Looting from the dead.  Whoever looked out from these eyes before is gone, letting Molly possess his body like the demon they take him for, like the ghosts he tracks.  
  
He's stopped asking himself "who was I?". The questions sit at the bottom of a well inside of him, and if the stories he makes up are many and loud enough he doesn't even hear them shout.

Worn-in, his body comes with knowledge that was written in the meat of it, not in the snuffed candle flame mind. Like: the hilts fitting his hands naturally, with no thought involved, muscle memory making the blades dance for him. Like: when he pays in blood it returns as power. Clutter lines the edges of his consciousness, odds and ends of a previous inhabitant, and it's nothing, most of the time, safe to be ignored. 

But it's not always his choice which of the secrets to keep.

Jester's fingers are on the back of his neck in the downtime after a battle, carefully cleaning a cut that's not healing quite right, and at first the only thing he feels is vague irritation. So what if the edges of it have gone reddish. It wouldn't hurt if she didn't keep _poking_ at it, and a little infection never killed him before. Certainly there isn't any reason to break out the healer's kit and make such a big fuss about it. He endures it graciously, though, because honestly, Jester can use all the practice she can get at being The Cleric. And maybe it'll stop her from making _that face_ at him.

But then she does something with her fingers that puts them on either side of his neck, the way you'd pick up a kitten, and Molly's brain ices over. 

For a horrible moment he thinks he'll whip around and attack her, because that's what the wrenching sickness in his chest feels like. But his body is glacial, pain-stunned, on a different plane of existence entirely than his thoughts. To his horrified surprise, he instead finds himself going wholly limp, and he drops like a rag doll. Someone makes a whimpering sound. There's something in front of his eyes that might be fabric, but he doesn't comprehend what he sees.  
  
"Molly!" Jester shouts, and her fingers are gone, but the _touch_ is still there, circling his neck. "You're hurt more than you said, you big idiot!"

He smells starch and baked goods and concludes that his face must be buried in her skirt. Gradually, the sick helplessness leaves his limbs and he rolls over. His head's still in her lap, which would be nice in any other situation, but the others clustering around them, leaning over with worried faces, is decidedly less so.

"Finally did him in, eh?" Beau says, in a you'd-be-doing-us-a-favor tone, but there's a tightness around her eyes that Molly doesn't like.

"Have you been teaching our cleric monk tricks to get rid of me, unpleasant one? That was a proper nerve pinch that she did on me," he shoots back, his voice is uncomfortably raspy, but he's gratified the spin at least still comes to him.

Beau's forehead wrinkles and she opens her mouth, but before she can say anything Jester starts shooing everyone off like a flock of chickens. "Guys, give us some space. Molly, can you stand? Come on!" She extends her arm to him as she does (which feels as strong as a girder covered in ruffles) and hauls him up like a sack of onions, as if he wasn't a head and a half taller than her.

They stagger off, away from the group, where he tries not to sag into himself too obviously once mostly out of sight. He's rattled more than he thought, shaking, too rattled to gather the threads of a likely story as easily as he should. Jester fixes him with an uncomfortably shrewd look. There's a little furrow between her eyebrows.

"I'm fine, blueberry," he starts, but she vehemently shakes her head.

"Sit," she orders. He sits. Jester sits facing him and smooths her skirt over her crossed legs and stares at him for so long it starts making him twitchy. "My mother screens all of her clients," she finally begins.

Molly can only look at her, dumbfounded by what seems to be a nonsequitur even by either of their admittedly flighty standards.

"She has a very pretty parlor to sit in and some nice men with big arms who keep an eye out - a lot like your friend, Bo the Breaker! - and there she has a little chat with everyone who wants to pay for her services." Jester's face is full of admiration, the way it always gets when she talks about her mother. The source of her reknown is not everyone's favorite parlor conversation, but from what he's heard, she must be a remarkable woman. That steel behind his friend's sugar exterior has to come from somewhere, surely.

Mollymauk raises his eyebrows at her. "That's good practice for her line of work. Very smart. But what's it got to do with me having a dizzy spell and getting you all worried for no reason?"

"Some of the clients get thrown out," Jester continues, still not acknowledging his words at all. Her tone is conversational, but he sees her hands straying to her belt, to the symbol tied there, hovering close as if seeking warmth. "They do not want to meet with the Ruby of the Sea at all, who is a beautiful, talented escort with an lovely singing voice. Do you know what they want?"

"No?" he says lightly, but he has an awful feeling that he does know.

"A demon whore," Jester says candidly, and her sweet face is very hard in that moment. “I haven't travelled far like you did, Molly, but I'm not stupid. I know what happens. I know that some people want us chased from town or worse, but that's not the only dangerous thing.”

The numbness returns to his face, and he has to try very hard to smile around it. The awful thing is that he doesn't know how close her words come to the truth. He's felt the sting of that look, of somebody disdaining and coveting at the same time, the rotten danger of it, and clearly Jester knows it too. But her drawn face seems to suggest she suspects worse damage in his past, something sketched out by that damned inexplicable reaction to her perfectly gentle touch. In all of the locked-up cored-out places there might be something that explains it. But that is a stranger's past, one that he has long since decided has nothing to do with him. _So why is he haunted by memories that are empty? What weight pulls him down?_  

“I know you're not stupid, Jes. But I do worry. It's not just the weather that's getting colder the more north we go. The people, too.” 

It's not anything resembling a straight answer. It's not even a good lie. But Jester doesn't seem like she expects something like that out of him. She looks sad, which she really never should, especially not on his behalf, but she's said her piece. He knows what she wants him to know, and can do with it as he will. 

He leans forward and embraces her. 

“Glad you're with us, blueberry. There's safety in numbers, you know, and there's still lots of tricks you can learn from me.” 

She hugs him back hard, arms squeezing around his waist. Well away from his neck, he notices. “I'm glad you're here too, so I can tell you that you should keep your swords clean!” Her words are admonishing, but she sounds a little choked up. 

Well, he won't mention what she won't, and the others say nothing much, either, when they return to camp. They don't get the opportunity. At the first sign of curious looks, Jester launches into a telling of a parade of noblemen who embarassed themselves in various ways, during which the point runs away from her no less than five times. Everyone hangs onto her words, food all but forgotten, as her tale grows more absurd and sordid. Molly amuses himself by throwing in a less-than-helpful comment every once in a while, to keep himself sharp.

“And he could never order a bowl of soup in Nicodranas again!” Jester finishes triumphantly, gesturing with a bread roll. There's noises of surprise and tentative agreement all around. Fjord leans over and quietly explains something to Caleb, who blinks and then swears, and Beau in particular is pulling a face like she'll never be able to look at soup the same way again. It's doing wonders to make Molly feel better. 

In her way, the Fool is the smartest card in the deck, he thinks despite himself. He doesn't even buy into the cards, is the thing, even though they're never far from his hands. They make for good stories to tell about people, but someone with a good eye and deft fingers can tell any story he cares to. The coin of the earnest and desperate pays as well as that of the amused skeptic. 

But whenever he shuffles the deck, plays with it to give his hands something to do and keep the cards supple, they leap out at him as masterfully as he could have stacked them, so blatant he would've been embarassed in a paid reading to give such on-the-nose answers. 

The Hanged Man, always flanked by the Swords, Two and Five and Ten, shouting from the dark hollows of his memories. Ever since he's been on the road with these people and all of their quirks and secrets the Five of Wands keeps rising to the top as well, and the Nine joins, adding its caution. If he cuts and stacks and cheats he can make the cards go where he wants them to go, but if he stops paying attention the tools of his own trickery go right back to taunting him.

The illustrations gleam in the firelight, paper cool and slick under his fingers. He barely touches his food, and when the question of keeping watch comes up he volunteers. That gives rise to another round of uncomfortable worried looks, but he's alert, if uncharacteristically quiet, and earns the first watch so he can shuffle his cards and stare into the fire and shuffle some more. The wagon is at his back, his coat drawn up all the way. The cut chafes a little, and he reaches for it instinctively, halts in fear of a repeat episode, but the brief teetering sickness is from nothing but expectation. His skin feels the same it always does under his fingertips, corded with tense muscle and patterned with scars.

Whose house does he live in? 


End file.
